Charlie Eats has a night on the town

Hold on to your hats folks, because things are getting a little crazy for the blog: for the first time in history, Charlie Eats made it's way out of some sort of production facility and into an actual restaurant. It was a great moment for all of us, probably the second most important escape of all time-- although I think in a few years we could look back and say this was actually more important than Moses leading the Jews out of Egypt. Only time will tell...

Aiding in my great escape was Ms. Erika Sheldon, the newest member of Moo Management. The lovely Ms. Sheldon suggested we make a trip to Bodega Bar in Santa Monica, and just like that I was out of a dark editing room and into the light of day, only to return to another dimly lit room in a matter of minutes.

Bodega Bar itself is discreetly tucked away near the corner of Broadway and Lincoln, a nondescript building that could, by appearance, be anything from an adult book store to a Scientology testing center. I was actually a little disappointed when I walked in and found it was a wine bar, because I haven't bought any adult literature or crazy religious books about aliens in a while and I thought I might be able to kill two birds with one stone. Not the case, however.

Walking into the bar, there are a few long high bar tables and some stools, all of which are splashed in a deep red color as light pours in through a floor to ceiling red tinted window. As the sun goes down the lights in the bar tend to neutralize the overall redness, which is good because after downing a bottle of wine and staring at everything with a red tint for an hour I started to believe I was actually the terminator, culminating in this exchange with the waitress:

Waitress: How is everything?
Me: COME WITH ME IF YOU WANT TO LIVE!

After reassuring her that I came back to save the humans this time, the waitress agreed to let me continue drinking. We tried two different reds that were both delicious; an Argentine Malbec and an Australian Shiraz. I'm not going to bore you with what I thought it tasted like, because I have no clue what it tasted like other than wine. Very delicious wine. And it briefly turned me into a robot, so apparently there was booze in it.

The food was equally satisfying. There are a wide array of appetizer choices available, and not a one will disappoint (I would say the pairing was fantastic, but I already feel like a d-bag for writing a blog and now I'm writing a blog post about going to a wine bar so lay off me, my street cred is at an all time low right now). Everything was a winner according to our group, especially the hummus and the bruschetta and olive tapenade. The pizzas were delicious as well, and if you have any other questions about the menu I'm sure one of the half dozen sweet dudes wearing fedoras over in the corner could answer your question. That's right, there were bigger tools there than the guy who writes this blog. I'm sure when they see this (because all fedora wearers scour blogspot to see if anyone wrote about them or other fedora related issues) there will be a scathing critique of my apparel choices for the evening on the ever popular "Manscaping Today" blog.

I kid about the people of course (don't come after me with those shears, Lance!) The crowd and general atmosphere was mellow, and they played Flight of the Conchords and similarly stellar music just loud enough to drown out any talk of ab workouts or hair gel. The deals for happy hour are supposedly very good, although I have my beautiful and talented host Erika to thank for my lack of knowledge regarding pricing.

All in all, it was a fantastic evening: great wine, great food. My first venture into the real world was a success, and now if you'll excuse me I need to go find John Connor.